Mayor Larry Morrissey, in his third term as Rockford's chief executive, wants to ask voters in a citywide referendum to ban labor arbitrators from giving wage increases to city unionized employees if it requires a tax increase to do so.

Aldermen failed by one vote last week to put the measure on the March ballot, but five of the 14 were missing, which is a whole other matter worthy of investigation. The issue will probably appear again Monday.

Gosh, who wouldn't vote for that? Who wants an arbitrator from Pinckneyville or Villa Park carpetbagging into Rockford and ordering City Hall to raise taxes to pay more money to police officers or firefighters?

However, as reporter Greg Stanley explained in his story Thursday, the referendum would be advisory and wouldn't change anything. So what's the point?

The mayor, who has had a rocky relationship with the police and fire unions, wants to raise visibility of the issue in hopes of changing the state's arbitration system. But any changes would have to be made at the state level, and the state is controlled by Democrats, whose core voters work for governments and belong to government employee unions.

In Illinois, police officers and firefighters can't strike for obvious public safety reasons. So if the city and union can't come to terms, an outside arbitrator is brought in to settle the dispute.

As Stanley pointed out, both sides must agree to the specific arbitrator, and "since 2006, arbitration decisions have been virtually even, falling in a union's favor 51 percent of the time and in a municipality's favor 49 percent of the time, a Register Star review showed."

So, if an arbitrator ruled for one side most of the time, she'd end up with no work. Arbiters in Illinois have to be politically and fiscally sophisticated to survive in a thankless job. Cities are stretched to the max on their budgets. If they raise taxes too high, their taxpayers migrate elsewhere, usually to nearby, lower-taxed suburbs.

It's an endless downward spiral that leads to ... Detroit.

That's been happening in Rockford for decades, and it's beginning to hurt city services.

Despite the squeeze, Rockford's elected leaders have been sensible, making hard cuts to city departments to keep property taxes as reasonable as possible while balancing the budget. Yes, we can enact a 5 percent utility tax, as the police union suggested. But that would be a zero-sum game, sending even more taxpaying homeowners and businesses to friendlier confines.

I applaud Morrissey's intent, but I don't think an advisory referendum would mean anything to the permanent government in Springfield. I've observed many Senate and House hearings over the years. Whenever the hearing deals with issues important to police officers and firefighters, their unions turn out their troops to sit there in their dress uniforms. They look like Sherman's army ready to burn Atlanta. This can be intimidating to lawmakers, which is the intent.

Results of an advisory referendum from "Isn't Rockford in Wisconsin" would have no influence at such a hearing because a referendum can't contribute thousands of dollars to legislators' election campaigns.

Instead of a referendum, maybe we should take up a collection for their campaign coffers. It would do more good.

Unless there's a complete Republican takeover of Springfield in November - not likely to happen - we're going to have to live with the arbitration system we've got. Morrissey can build coalitions with other cities through the Illinois Municipal League, headed this year by Loves Park Mayor Darryl Lindberg, to try to make changes.

Also, the city administration and unions should work together to heal as many rifts as possible. I agree with a point made by Ald. Tom McNamara, D-3, in Stanley's story: A referendum isn't needed to show that people don't like tax increases.

"I don't think an arbitrator should tell us what we can or can't afford, but I think working to repair any broken relations with the unions would be a far greater use of time than passing something like this."

Chuck Sweeny: 815-987-1366; csweeny@rrstar.com; @chucksweeny

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